Prof. Keith Hawkins (University of Texas)

One of the key objectives of modern astrophysics is to understand the formation and evolution of galaxies. The Milky Way is an optimal laboratory for testing our theories of galaxy formation. However, dissecting the assembly history of the galaxy requires a detailed mapping of the structural, dynamical chemical, and age distributions of its stellar populations. Recently, we have entered an era of large spectroscopic and astrometric surveys which has begun to pave the way for the exciting advancements in this field. Combining data from the many multi-object spectroscopic surveys already underway and the rich dataset from Gaia will undoubtedly be the way forward in order to disentangle the full chemo-dynamical history of our Galaxy. In this talk, I will discuss several works in Galactic archaeology and efforts to chemically map the Galaxy and how these studies can be used to learn about the structure and cosmic history of the Milky Way using Gaia, SDSS-V and explore what the next generation of surveys (such as After-Sloan-V) will bring.